A Return to Political Soapboxing, by Way of Your Cherished Childhood
Memories
Howard: Hey, did you hear about President Bush's plan to send humans to
Mars
in the next ten years?

Jesse: You can't be serious.

Howard: No, it's all true. He also wants to make a permanent colony on the
moon.

Jesse: God, that is so much bullshit. Man, that's worse than Captain Planet.

Howard: The cartoon show?

Jesse: The very same.

Howard: How can you be against the Captain? He did so much for the earth!

Jesse: Fuck Captain Planet. Captain Planet was a fucking racist bastard.

Howard: How was Captain Planet racist?

Jesse: Think about it, man. Look at the super powers everyone had. There
was
wind, earth, fire, water, and heart. And what does the Latino kid get stuck
with? He gets stuck with heart.

Howard: So? Maybe he wanted heart.

Jesse: Nobody fucking wants heart. While all the other kids are making
earth
quakes and floods and shit, this kids just standing in the back like a
douche bag because he doesn't have any discernable super powers. I mean, he
has the fucking power of heart! What the fuck is that?

Howard: It's heart. You know, it can like, make people fall in love and
shit.

Jesse: He can't make people fall in love. Only fate and circumstance can do
that.

Howard: Are you sure? I think he could make people fall in love.

Jesse: Whatever. That's beside the point. What the kind of power is the
ability to make people fall in love? That's the stupidest goddamn super
hero
ever. I mean, Superman had bullet impervious skin, and what does that kid
get? The ability to make people fall in love? What kind of shit is that?

Howard: Hey, don't knock the ability to make people fall in love. I mean,
Superman had many hard years of pining for Lois Lane, when that kid could
have just made her fall in love with him.

Jesse: Yes, but at that point, would a love that was empty of free will
be a
love worth having?

Howard: I don't know. Does anyone have free will? I mean, maybe it's all a
matter of divine predestination.

Jesse: Yes, but if that's the case, then God has allready decreed that
those
two people would fall in love, meaning the power of heart becomes even more
fucking useless than it previousley was.

Howard: Hmmm...but without heart, their powers couldn't have comined to
form
the Captain.

Jesse: And that's probably a good thing, because he was a racist.

Howard: Explain.

Jesse: Look at the evidence. As if the mullet was not enough indication, he
gave arguably the shittiest job to the Latino kid. It's like the entire
American economy, only in scale. Cartoon scale. People complain about
Mexicans taking all of our jobs, when they're not taking the kick ass jobs
like doctor, or water; they're taking the shitty jobs like janitor, or
heart.

Howard: So you're arguing that Captain Planet is nothing but a tool of
American economic imperialism in the form of a saturday morning children's
cartoon?

Jesse: In short, yes.

Howard: Ok...But then how do you explain the other minorities? I mean,
there
were only two white kids on that show. Out of five. I mean, he's got the
numbers.

Jesse: Oh, there's explanations for them.

Howard: Such as?

Jesse: Ok, the Asian chick. She was like all into science and shit, man.
Like, of course, one fo them has to be all about education so they could
teach kids about the earth and crap like that, but why did it have to be
the
Asian one? Why couldn't it have been the Scottish one? Or was he all into
drinking and golf?

Howard: I don't think they had much alcohol on Captain Planet. Or for that
matter, cartoons in general.

Jesse: You mean you never saw the episode where Captain Planet beats the
shit out of all of the planateers while wearing nothing but tube socks,
ripped boxers, and a stained wife beater? I mean, shit, he may be a
cartoon,
but he was obviously drunk.

Howard: Uhhh...no. I'm pretty sure you just made that episode up.

Jesse: Look, whether I made that up or not is beside the point.

Howard: All right. Then what is the point of all of this?

Jesse: It's called being a critical thinker, asshole. Captain Planet seemed
like a harmless cartoon. In fact, it seemed like a good one. It tried to
teach our children to love and respect the earth. Instead, it implicitly
taught them to be racist tools of global capitalist imperialism. It's just
like this Mars landing. It sound all benign and even wonderful, until you
think of the fact that there are millions of peple starving on earth, and
instead of feeding them, we're wasting billions of dollars sending people
thousands of light years away for little to no reason. We may as well be
searching for five magical rings that combine to form a weird gray
superhero.

Howard: Has anyone every told you that you watch too much t.v.?

• April 9, 2004 - No Shame Cedar Falls
  

• August 27, 2004 - No Shame Cedar Falls
  

  Performed by Jesse Wozniak and Tim Pieper

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